The widespread use and increasing development of the Internet has allowed exchanges of information in ways previously not possible. The Internet has allowed social networks to now be made available online Social networks enable users to publish and share information, e.g., their name, school, metropolitan groups, events, activities, interests, etc., with the people they care about, and to interact with other users online For example, commercial social networking sites such as MySpace™, Facebook™, Orkut™, etc., are now a common place for online users, especially among the younger generation.
In general, users of social network sites can publish and customize their profiles based on the capabilities and limitations of the social network site. For example, users can publish information by filling in specific boxes provided by the social network site. Furthermore, users can rearrange how the entered information is being published and rendered, thereby tailoring the published profile to their personal preferences given the capabilities of the commercial social networking sites.
Unfortunately, users are unable to customize their profile beyond the limitations provided by the social network site. For example, users that wish to publish their latest result, e.g., their score and level completed, in playing a set top console game device such as, for example, X-Box™, PlayStation™, Nintendo™, etc. are unable to do so if the social network does not provide an input mean for entering and publishing that information. In other words, applications to be rendered and published by a given social network site are limited to the specific implementation of the site and are non-extendable. As such, it is difficult to aggregate additional information, beyond what is offered by social network sites, to become part of a user profile.
Publishing to a typical user profile requires the user to manually enter the information to be published as part of the user profile. For example, a user is required to manually enter information about a given application to be published as part of the user profile, e.g., level and score achieved in a particular game. In other words, there is no automatic mean of capturing information related to a given application to be published and rendered by the social network site except by requiring the user to manually enter that information.
Moreover, a user is required to manually enter updated information in order to reflect new developments in order to update the user profile. For example, the user is required to manually enter new results for a given game, e.g., completed level 4 with the score of 613, in order to update a previously accomplished result, e.g., completed level 3 with the score of 200. In other words, updating user profile is performed manually as new information becomes available.